“Mr. McGill,” she said and then she turned her intense gaze on Iran.
“Iran,” I said, “this is Mrs. Mary Deharain.”
“Ma’am,” my protégé said. He even ducked his shaved head an inch or so.
“Mrs. Deharain has six rooms on the fifth floor and another six on the sixth floor of this building,” I told Iran. “For a hundred and fifty dollars a week she and the girl working for her serve meals and wash bedclothes.”
“I don’t have no money, man. You know that.”
“Room and board is on me,” I said. “On top of that I’ll give you a stipend for doing work in my office.”
“How much is a stipend?”
“We’ll start it at two hundred a week and see how it goes.”
“Breakfast is served at seven,” the severe landlady said. “Lunch at eleven forty-five, and dinner at six-fifteen. No loud music or TV in the rooms. No food, either. No guests.”
“No guests?” Iran said.
“You can be friendly with the other boarders,” I added, “but no personal questions, understand?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I get it.”
I turned to Mary. She nodded. Her face was oval-shaped and lovely but sad, like some long-suffering character from a Dickens novel. She had loved Bob. She still visited him at Attica every third week. He never found out about her betrayal. He didn’t know that she knew about the full range of his crimes.
“I’ll see you at the office in the morning,” I said to Iran.
“What time?”
“Let’s say nine-fifteen.”
I left him at the threshold of the unexceptional building, to make my way into the night.
I like walking the nighttime streets of Manhattan. Ever since I was an adolescent on the run from the juvenile and foster-care bureaucracies, I found the darkness and electric light soothing. I feel in control when I see bright neon and deep shadows. This relaxation allows me to think more deeply about the twisted nature of other men and myself.
No one knew where Chrystal was; not her husband, her living sibling, or her parents. She was, most probably, in trouble — big trouble. And the only facts I had to go on were lies: Shawna pretending to be Chrystal, some drawling cowboy acting as if he were a nerdy billionaire; the rich man giving me money and then crying extortion.
There were three dead women: two married to Cyril Tyler and one who had merely pretended to be his wife. I had been paid twenty-two thousand dollars so far and had yet to figure out what task it was I was supposed to accomplish.
I grinned a dark smile on a darker street and once again took out my cell phone to make a call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby, what’s up?”
“I came home to a house full of children who say that they’re brothers and sisters but look like a family of cousins,” Aura said.
“I guess you could say that their mother got around.”
“I see.”
“Somebody murdered her, and in the same room where the children were sleeping.”
“My God.”
“I’m sorry to put them with you but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“That’s because you did the right thing,” she said kindly. “They can stay here as long as you need.”
“Can I do the same?”
“No.”
28
In the morning I awoke next to Katrina. She was sleeping peacefully. Looking at her, I knew that she was deep into her affair, and having such a good time that her usual restlessness was quelled. This didn’t bother me. Katrina and I were connected in ways that I couldn’t explain if I wanted to. We didn’t love each other, not in the marital sense. Our proximity and the children made us family. I wasn’t her brass ring, but the ride was over and I was the best bet on a field of nags.
I dressed quickly and was almost out the door when she said, “Leonid?”
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t seen much of you lately.” She sat up in the bed and stretched languorously.
I met Katrina in her springtime. She was beautiful in a way that only Scandinavians can be. She had hair of blond fire and skin the color of the milk that gods drank before shaking mountains. That was a long time ago, and though she was no longer that stunning youth, her beauty was experiencing a kind of Indian summer, a resurgence that even I could see — and feel.
“You been goin’ out with your friends,” I said.
“I miss you.”
“I’m right here.”
“Can we have a special dinner tonight?”
“Sure. That’d be great. I’m in the middle of a case, but I’ll try my best to get a few hours for dinner.”
She took a deep breath and sighed, lay back in the bed, and closed her eyes.
I liked her very much right then. Live long enough and you can learn to appreciate just about anything.
Mardi was already at her desk at 8:09, when I got in. She wore a medium-gray cotton dress that, I knew from previous days, came down to the middle of her calves. There was a blue stone depending from a silver chain around her neck.
She was organizing and reorganizing her desk, and my life.
“Good morning, Mr. McGill,” she said, standing up.
Her pale blue eyes scoped out my mood. It was hard for her that morning because what I mostly felt was confused resignation.
I walked up to the desk and looked at her papers. Mardi wrote in purple ink. It was one of the few ways she held on to a decimated childhood and so I didn’t complain.
“You want me to run down and get you some coffee?” she asked.
“How’s Marly?” I asked. That was the receptionist’s younger sister, the reason she and Twill had planned to murder her father.
“Fine,” Mardi said with a smile. “She’s going into sixth grade in September. She wants new clothes.”
“We could all go shopping together one Saturday if you want.”
“You’ll spoil her,” the nineteen-year-old woman said.
“That’s what girl children are for.”
“Should I go get you that coffee?”
“No. Sit down. I need to talk to you.”
She lowered into her office chair, the same chair I once used to lay low the man-monster Willie Sanderson. I took her visitor’s seat, hunching forward to put my elbows on my knees.
“What do you think about Iran?” I asked.
“He’s nice.”
“You know that’s not what I’m askin’ you. And even if he was nice, that’s probably the least important thing about him.”
“Are you going to hire him?” she asked.
“What makes you think that?”
“You never let anybody else sit at one of our desks before.”
Our.
“He’s had a hard life, M. Maybe harder than he deserves.”
The last few words registered in her pale eyes.
“You’re a good man, Mr. McGill,” she said and I couldn’t help feeling that she had seen inside my head and understood that I had been a party to Iran’s downfall.
“It’s not about me,” I said. “I like the kid. I think he’s got potential.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s loyal and knows more than people might think. He’d probably be pretty brave but not like you or Twill. Not many people can be like that.”
She wasn’t looking for a raise or job security. I had stepped in and kept her and my son from becoming murderers. I’d given her a job when she didn’t know what else to do... And, of course, I made certain that her rapist father was in prison and would never harm another child.
I shook my head and grinned, stood up, and said, “Here I am the man of secrets and I got Dodona answering my phones.”